Influence Your Food Truck Staff by Listening to Them

Influence Your Food Truck Staff by Listening to Them

People don’t like being pushed, or even nudged, to do something. So when you need your staff members to take action—change their behavior, adapt a new strategy—inspire them to commit rather than forcing them to.

The best way to do this is to listen, without your own needs and biases getting in the way. Try to understand where your employees are coming from. Resist the urge to defend yourself, explain yourself, or offer quick fixes. You can help more effectively later, when the time is right, if you don’t pre-judge what they need (which might be very different from what you think). Instead, remember that you are listening to learn. Ask questions like: What does that mean for you? How do you feel about it? What’s your perspective on it? This is listening of the highest order.

Richard is an architect by degree (Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, Michigan) who began his career in real estate development and architectural planning. In September of 2010 he created Mobile Cuisine Magazine to fill an information void he found when he began researching how to start a mobile hotdog cart in Chicago. Richard found that there was no central repository of mobile street food information anywhere on the internet, and with that, the idea for MCM was born.